constants
by wolfypuppypiles
Summary: Focuses on Nicks thoughts about his mom hitting him. Character study sort of. Nick Clarke didn't like change. He like things he could rely on like the way drugs made you happy and then they made you sad and then you took some more. He thought his Mom would never change but she had never hit him before and she was no longer one of his constants.


Nick Clarke didn't really like change. Evidenced by the fact that he hadn't yet changed his clothes even though he had been home several days and even though they weren't even his. But he figured they were comfortable enough and they served their purpose as clothes so there wasn't a need to change them.

He had always thought his dad was dependable, reliable; he had always thought his dad would never leave. But things change. And now the world was changing, the very rules of the universe. You see, normally when someone dies they stay dead. But for some twisted reason the universe had decided to shake things up and add in the undead to this already disintegrating world.

Everything Nick had ever known was different and he knew that despite the soldiers walking around it would never go back to normal and the fences they were being kept in wouldn't stop what was happening.

But the thing about drugs is that they are predictable. You take a little something and you go up and up and up and then you go down and you take some more. Nick started getting into all that stuff after his Dad left. He supposed he could have done something like concentrate on school work and your future but that was more Alicia's thing.

Nick was a fan of instant gratification because everything always changed and he figured he couldn't prepare for or live in his future until it happened. So he took pills and he liked the way he could rely on them to make him happy, and even if he went down afterwards he could always rely on the same pattern of results. Up and down and up and down and when he was so high he could taste the clouds his thoughts couldn't bother him.

Nicks head was always a little loud, always a little hard to keep track of things but the drugs helped to make it shut up for a bit. Or maybe it was the other way around. It hardly mattered anymore anyway because he knew it wasn't about the ups and downs it was about his need for them. His body needed them to survive now, too dependent on the kick of chemicals to give up. Now that the world was changing more than ever before Nick needed something stable, something he understood.

He thought he had understood his mom too. She worried about him and she had kept putting him into those stupid rehab facilities but he knew she did it because she cared. She still cared didn't she?

Nick had hated her persistent need to fix him but he knew that her methods would always stay the same. He knew how the system worked, he told Travis as much. Get his head shrunk, get clean, get out. And then he'd do it all over again.

He loved his Mom, I mean, she was his Mom. He had told her he didn't need that Oxycodone pill, he told her he forgot. He hadn't, he had just wanted something stronger; his skin had been itching with need. But he wanted to make her proud, to stop her worrying so he told her he didn't need it. He hadn't expected to keep it from her for long, she kept too close an eye on him for that and he had been getting too desperate, too sloppy.

He expected her to yell at him or to sigh in that disapproving way of hers and say his name like it was a synonym for disappointment. And she had yelled but her hands started hitting him and the physical blows hurt but knowing that his own mother was doing this to him hurt so much more. She had never hit him before. Never, not once.

His Mom had been one of his life's constants and the fact that his remaining parent was changing and possibly giving up on him too broke his drug abused heart a little more than it already was.

Nick was scared. The world was dying and everything was different. Everything was backwards and he didn't know what to do but find another constant to latch on to. He hadn't found any drugs in any of the houses he had been in and he was too shaken up to go find more at this particular moment so like a wounded dog he decided to go back home to lick his wounds.

He should have closed the door but Alicia probably would have found out anyway. He didn't tell his little sister what happened because he knew she would hate Mom for what she did and he didn't want to break apart his family any more than his father or his own drug habits had. He didn't mean to flinch when she reached for him but he could still feel his Mom's hands on him and his face still throbbed. Alicia moved slowly, telling him it was okay and wrapping her arms around him, making Nick feel safe and like she was keeping him all in one place if only for a moment.

Dipping his chin to touch her shoulder and relaxing a little in her grasp Nick took a deep breath. Since their dad left his sister hid herself behind a wall of sarcasm and uninterested glares and she got angry at Nick all the time but being her big brother Nick also knew that Alicia had never been quite able to stop caring about her stupid older sibling.

He knew she hated parts of him, like the parts of him that lied and ran away and repeated the same addicted behavior again and again even when he promised he would stop. But he had seen at the hospital, when she visited him, and in her kindness just now that Alicia would never stop loving the big brother that always tried to cheat at monopoly but stole her some money from the banker as well and that same goofy grin that he used to cheer her up when she was little. He hadn't realized that Alicia loving him was something he could rely on but now he thought he should have known. Of course Alicia was his constant. Of course she was.


End file.
